Democrats Outline Plans for Immigration

WASHINGTON — A coalition of top Senate Democrats laid out the contours of a proposed overhaul of immigration laws on Thursday — and appealed to Republicans to join them in pursuing it — even as doubts mounted about the prospects of winning approval of legislation this year.

Under the outline of immigration changes drawn up by Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the No. 3 Senate Democrat, the federal government would enhance border security and create a new fraud-resistant Social Security card.

Illegal immigrants who wish to remain in this country would have to admit they had broken the law, pay back taxes and fees, and pass a criminal background check to qualify for legal residency after eight years.

“Our immigration system is broken,” the majority leader, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, said late Thursday afternoon at a packed news conference. “We’re offering this framework as an invitation, an invitation to our Republican colleagues to work with us to solve this problem that has plagued our country for too long.”

Even as the Democratic senators were still speaking, President Obama issued a statement praising the proposal as “an important step,” and he warned that lack of federal action would “leave the door open to a patchwork of actions at the state and local level that are inconsistent and, as we have seen recently, often misguided.”

Mr. Obama’s statement was a reference to the tough new law recently enacted in Arizona that many Democrats view as draconian and that helped prompt Democrats to take on the immigration issue sooner than some had planned.

“What has become increasingly clear,” Mr. Obama said, “is that we can no longer wait to fix our broken immigration system, which Democrats and Republicans alike agree doesn’t work.”

The statement contrasted with comments he made to reporters a day earlier on Air Force One, in which he suggested that Congress might not have the appetite for an immigration overhaul.

At the news conference, Democratic leaders said they were presenting the legislative framework in hopes of persuading Republicans to collaborate on the issue. They are also looking to sound out skeptical Democrats to gauge the prospects for support.

House Democrats have said they will not act unless the Senate moves first.

Mr. Reid, who is facing a difficult re-election fight back home, first put the issue back on the Congressional agenda a few weeks ago when he told a pro-immigration rally in Las Vegas that he intended to pursue legislation, a stance that caught many in Washington off guard.

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the chief Republican negotiating with Democrats on the issue, dropped out of the talks, saying he was angry that Mr. Reid seemed to be giving immigration priority over a climate bill.

At the news conference Mr. Reid said it was “not logical to use immigration as an excuse to not help on energy.” But he also said Democrats were not directing their message at Mr. Graham.

“There are 40 other Republicans,” he said.

On Thursday, the House Republican leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, flatly predicted that Congress would not send an immigration measure to the president this year. Mr. Boehner accused Democrats of engaging in a “cynical ploy to try to engage voters, some segment of voters, to show up in this November’s elections.”

“There is not a chance that immigration is going to move through the Congress,” he said.

But Mr. Schumer, who is now chairman of a subcommittee on immigration long headed by the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, said he believed there was a possibility of success.

Mr. Schumer hailed his approach as a way to combine border security and improvements in the American work force while providing a chance for millions of people living illegally in the United States to gain legal status and pay taxes.

And Mr. Schumer, who is known for his ambition in both the political and policy arenas, drew loud laughter when he said that he would not have accepted the subcommittee gavel if he had thought otherwise.

“If I did not believe we could accomplish immigration reform, I never would have chosen to accept the immigration subcommittee chairmanship,” he said. “Committees of inaction and legislative backwaters are not places in which I thrive.”

Democrats acknowledge, however, facing a difficult task considering that President George W. Bush, was unable to persuade enough of his fellow Republicans to back immigration changes in 2007, and the effort collapsed.

A version of this article appears in print on April 30, 2010, on page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: Democrats Detail Immigration Plan In Plea to G.O.P. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe